link: Alpha Dog of the Week - Steven Slater - The Colbert Report - 8/10/10 - Video Clip | Comedy Central

There are 2 million miles of paved roads in the United States. Each of those miles has to be resurfaced periodically and the material generally used to pave roads is asphalt which is a petroleum product. So not only do you need to put gas in your family car, but the road you drive on also contributes to this country’s thirst for fossil fuels. But, what if that same road could instead be part of the production of green energy using solar panels. That wonderfully crazy idea is the brainchild of Scott Brusaw who is the CEO of Solar Roadways.

link: Solar Roads: The New Energy/Transport Convergence Device? | GeekBeat.TV

If they can solve the friction coefficient in differing conditions (ice on glass sounds really bad) then this may be a really good idea (something like this would actually be a decent idea for stimulus - as opposed to getting monkey's high).

I cut my teeth as a Java programmer from the earliest days of Java (pre 1.0). So, I followed Sun quite closely through the years. As I watched the Google I/O keynotes, I was struck by how much Vic Gundotra sounded like a cross between John Gage and Scott McNealy.

Sun, used to make a habit out of cracking one liners about Microsoft. Google has done the same with Apple.

“Sun Is Not Proprietary, Just As IBM Is Not Bankrupt”

Replace IBM with Apple and Sun with Google…sound familiar?

As a I think about it, the comparison does not stop there. Sun stumbled into a fantastic market that was out of it’s core competency. They decided to use their cash cow, hardware, to fund this new business. Google has entered into the phone business. There is money to be made their, but the development and support efforts are largely funded by search revenue. Sound similar?

If you look back in history, Sun released and managed Java as free software (yes it was not open til later). For years, they funded that effort with their hardware business. Eventually, they were…

Greenpeace also links Apple’s decision to locate a huge cloud data center in North Carolina to that state’s cheap electricity supplies, which come mainly from coal-fired plants. Other companies, including Google, also run big data center operations in the Carolinas.

link: Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Greenpeace raids the cloud

This is another example of media games (or misstatements). While it is true that these facilities are in NC and it is true that most of NC’s power comes from coal, it is not true that these particular facilities are powered by coal. In fact, the specific facilities that he is referring to were intentionally located near Nuclear power plants. This is the CLEANEST and cheapest energy available.

Propagating that falsehood is another example of the modern media’s tendency to avoid fact checking or exaggerate in order to make a point. The bad thing is that the thousands of people that read that report or his blog that do not live in NC will never know that the…

In 2003, after I unveiled a prototype Linux desktop called Project Looking Glass*, Steve called my office to let me know the graphical effects were “stepping all over Apple’s IP.” (IP = Intellectual Property = patents, trademarks and copyrights.) If we moved forward to commercialize it, “I’ll just sue you.”

What’s more interesting is that it appears the Apple is just the only one that is honest about it. Apple says, we will sue you, we will win, so stop. Maybe it is arrogant and uncalled for, but they shoot straight — old west style. Microsoft on the other hand seems to be more into the art of the shakedown.

Bill skipped the small talk, and went straight to the point, “Microsoft owns the office productivity market, and our patents read all over OpenOffice.” OpenOffice is a free office productivity suite found on tens of millions of desktops worldwide. It’s a tremendous brand ambassador for its owner – it also limits the appeal of Microsoft Office to businesses and those…